Does environmental quality influence health expenditures? Empirical evidence from a panel of selected OECD countries

Paresh Narayan () and Seema Narayan ()

Ecological Economics, 2008, vol. 65, issue 2, 367-374

Abstract: In this paper we examine the role of environmental quality in determining per capita health expenditures. We take a panel cointegration approach in order to explore the possibility of estimating both short-run and long-run impacts of environmental quality. Our empirical analysis is based on eight OECD countries, namely Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK for the period 1980-1999. We find that per capita health expenditure, per capita income, carbon monoxide emissions, sulphur oxide emissions and nitrogen oxide emissions are panel cointegrated. While short-run elasticities reveal that income and carbon monoxide emissions exert a statistically significant positive effect on health expenditures, in the long-run in addition to income and carbon monoxide, we find that sulphur oxide emissions have a statistically significant positive impact on health expenditures.

Date: 2008
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:65:y:2008:i:2:p:367-374

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